✦✦✦✧ If you liked these Finns’ last folk metal album “One Man Army,” you’ll be equally delighted by this one. There are some questionable vocal moments (the clean singing is especially shaky at times), but that’s a fleeting misstep in an otherwise rambunctious Amon-Amarth-meets-DragonForce beerhall adventure. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Interesting, jarring, alien… in other words, business as usual for this band. They’re playing around with unheralded tempo changes more this time than I recall in previous releases. If you ever find yourself missing Gorguts, Torrential Downpour, and Don Caballero at the same time, this is your jam! See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ VOM have by now perfected their recipe for metalcore-anchored djent. Think TesseracT-meets-Vildhjarta-meets-All That Remains. It’s an intriguing yet unholy alliance, and the combinations miss the mark a nontrivial amount of the time. But there’s enough here, between the songwriting, musicianship, and surprising twists that it defies dismissal. Definitely worth a listen, perhaps as a consummate example of what’s possible in metal in 2017. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ My description from Entheos’ first album is equally applicable here, and the band continue to push the envelope of electronic-infused prog metal in twisted ways. If anything, their sophomore effort is even more ambitious, inventive, and above all alien. It’s so out there, in fact, that I find myself having a hard time relating to it on an emotional level. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ ABR continues their epic quest to find new territory without spooking the metalcore natives. It shreds, it surprises, it’s full of energy. How they manage to make a progressive metalcore album is a kind of magic. This album should satisfy pretty much everyone who can be compelled to give it a listen, except for those who doggedly just want more of the same. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ The superficial humor of the band’s premise (and their song titles) is more than ever outclassed by the serious and obvious ambition here. Keep in mind, these guys also have dayjobs in The Black Dahlia Murder, Municipal Waste, and Six Feet Under. The resulting riffage is unsurprisingly virtuosic and inventive. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This meat-and-potatoes death metal album takes a few tracks to get into its stride, but once you get past its uninspired opening, what’s left is exciting and original. By the end it’s almost groundbreaking, even. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Oh man, this is legitimately ugly. I think I’m in love. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on this lo-fi post-hardcore sludgerock, the music comes to a full stop out of nowhere and does something completely different, which just adds to the overall chaos. I don’t want to just come out and say outright that this piece of shit is actually postmodern art… so you take a listen and let me know what you think. See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ Ironically, as Ne Obvs bring on ex-Cynic bassist Robin Zielhorst for their third album, their sound evolves away from Cynic-inspired, and into more of an Opeth-meets-The-Faceless groove. This is excellent prog, although at times it may come across as a little long and overprecious. Still, worth at least one listen all the way through (the 14-minute eponymous album closer is a Must). See the rest here
✦✦✦✧ This reminds me of the attenuated excellence on DEP’s “One Of Us Is The Killer.” The energy and rawness is still here, but this is a somewhat more evolved Converge. Somewhat more experimental with their riffs and motifs. Somewhat more expansive. And somewhat more reserved emotionally (not the worst thing in the world, but noticeable coming from the guys that gave us the juggernaut “Axe To Fall”). See the rest here
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